SAN FRANCISCO — A swath of icy slopes in Antarctica has staked an unofficial claim as the coldest place on Earth.

Frigid pockets of air downhill from the East Antarctic plateau can chill ice surfaces to as low as –93.2°Celsius, reported Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., in a press conference at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting on December 9.